The Town: As Hersheytown is to chocolate, so this town is to bank Jobs

Or so the producers of this largely predictable but still marvelous crime drama would have us believe; the Charlestown area of Boston has produced more bank robbers and outlaws than any other district around the country, according to a blurb at the beginning of the movie.


Carrying on that dishonorable tradition are the four men at the heart of the story who start out knocking off a bank wearing Skeletor masks (which unfortunately don't cover their necks; more on that);

Their first mistake is taking a hostage, an error compounded when the de facto leader (affleck, of course) falls in love with her, without revealing his identity or his role in her recent misery.

Worse still, she's the material witness for the Feds in their investigation of the case. Affleck walsk this tightrope with added pressure from his unhinged and psychotically violent partner (well played by Jeremy Renner)and her sister, with whom he occasionally had sex prior to the arrival of Ms. Bank Manager.

Mad Men's John Hamm takes a break from playing slimy 60s ad exec, to play a slightly-less slimy FBI bureau chief proverbially one step behind the perpetrators, but unable to make the final grab. And there are intriguing cameos from Chris Cooper as the father of Affleck's character, doing life for his own misdeeds, and Pete Postlethwaite, as the organizer who ruthlessly secures them gigs and keeps them in the crime game.

There are the routine car chases, gunfights and explosions, but Affleck gives them an unforced intensity that fits in with the crime community feel. By the way, you may notice that in this innercity, there are no black people or Hispanics.

In the end (without giving the end) love trumps all, but not quite in the way you might have expected. Ego aside, this is another sure-footed directorial effort from Affleck (he also did Gone, Baby Gone) that will hold your attention without insulting your intelligence.